Monday, February 1, 2016

Burned at the Stake, Part 3: HIV Controversies and Experimentation

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." --Dr. Marcia Angell

President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler announcing the probable cause of AIDS and introduces Robert C. Gallo, NIH scientist to the press on April 23, 1984. On that very same day, April 23, 1984, at the US Patent & Trademark Office the United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services (assignee/owner to these patents) filed for 2 patents. One patent #4647773 entitled "Method of continuous production of retroviruses (HTLV-III) from patients with AIDS and pre-AIDS," with inventors Robert C. Gallo and Mikulas Popovic. And the second patent #4520113 entitled, "Serological detection of antibodies to HTLV-III in sera of patients with AIDS and pre-AIDS conditions," with inventors Robert C. Gallo, Mikulas Popovic and Mangalasseril G. Sarngadharan.

and

These inventions were about the creation of test kits for the detection of antibodies in the blood of AIDS and pre-AIDS patients. This announcement coupled with the filing of these patents is an example of the haste to solvea crisis health situation. And more importantly a haste to make money through ownership of an invention and a monopolization of that invention. Should we be surprised that the US Government owns patents and licenses these inventions out, thus making money. I had always believed that a government was a separate entity from a business. Governmentsmake laws that define and control a society and businesses make money and/or profits. Yet here is situation where a government is invested in their own research and researchers-Gallo, Popovic, Sarrngadharan. Ethically, the situation is somewhat disturbing if one believes that the US is a democracy. It is government policies/laws that have determined that people, particularly pregnant mothers must be tested for this disease. And the more people tested, the more money the government makes. Thus the government is no longer a disinterested party in determining law or health care policies because it has an investment.

Believe it or not this situation gets even more ethically disturbing. Prior to Gallo's discovery, he borrowed some cultures from the lab of Luc Montagnier. Those cultures somehow got mixed in with his research cultures. Either accidentally or deliberately Gallo's lab had contaminated their own samples with the French samples. Those samples were considered the proof of Gallo's discovery of the probably cause of AIDs.

The Pasteur Institute in France sued the US Department of Health over this "borrowing." The Pasteur Institute had applied for a patent on their cultures for a test kit for AIDs at the US Patent & Trademark Office a year prior to the US Department of Health's application for a patent. For some reason the US Department of Health's patent application went through the process faster than the Pasteur Institute's patent application. The US Department of Health's patent application became a patent while the Pasteur Institute's patent application just languishedon a patent examiner's table. Not surprisingly the Pasteur Institute in 1985 sued the US Department of Health over this situation.This dispute went on for 2 years when a compromise was agreed to in which their would be a 50/50 split of credit for discovery of the virus and monies from the testing kits. A few years later after further investigation, credit for discovery was given to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi rather than Gallo and Popovic. The 50/50 split became the 60/40 split in favor of the Pasteur Institute. The Federal Office of Research Integrity found that Robert Gallo committed scientific misconduct.

Gallo left his government research position at the NIH to form his own company. Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of hiv and Gallo was left out. These series of events in the discovery of hiv should be considered a theme. If hiv historywas a Hollywood movie this would be the ominous cloud that would shroud the continuing events of hiv/aids research and discovery.The use of AZT and its toxic nature and the thousands that died due to its toxicity should be engraved into the stone-cold history books of medical disasters.

HIVNET 012 was the first clinical trial to show that a single dose of nevirapine to mother and child would prevent hiv transmission. Brooks Jackson was the clinical investigator in charge of this drug trial in Uganda. John Hopkins had an article published about him prior to concerns about the ethics of this drug trial. The rather fitting title is "The Pathologist Who Struck Gold."http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/S01/feature.html

The HIVNET 012 trial was published in the Lancet in 1999 with many researchers involved besides Jackson. Some of the researchers are well-known to those who follow the studies done on Mother to Child Transmission of hiv: LA Guay who is now VP of research at Elizabeth Glaser Foundation (which gets funding from Boehringer Ingelheim as well as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), L Mofenson who led hiv pediatric research at the NIH and is now employed by the Elizabeth Glaser Foundation, MG Fowler who is a professor of pathology at John Hopkins http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10485720

The HIVNET 012 trial collected breast milk samples and sent them back (frozen) to John Hopkins because they at that time did not have a PCR lab to test the breast milk. Funny how John Hopkins is one of the co-owners of 2 human milk fat globule patents (to treat hiv/aids patients for diarrhea and/or rotavirus) patent #5505955 and #5667797 filed in 1995 and 1996. Yes, just a coincidence.

An article in The Body entitled, "Internal Review says "Division of AIDS" A Troubled Organization..." states that Fishbein told a panel at the Institute of Medicine that "the Uganda study [HIVNET 012] was so poorly conducted that it potentially put the lives of hundreds of participants and infants at risk."

In 2003 a US pregnant mom named Joyce Ann Hatford (diagnosed as hiv positive, although had no known risk factors) was enrolled in a study that was an outgrowth of the Uganda drug trial (yes, HIVNET 012). She died 72 hours after a c-section from liver failure. NIH researchers believed it was the drug that killed her. An email from one of the NIH researchers stated that not much we [researchers at NIH] can do about dumb docs. NIH researchers believed that Joyce Hartford's impending liver failure could have been picked up through testing and supposedly prevented. Liver failure is a known side effect of nevirapine. http://khn.org/morning-breakout/dr00027267/

The BBC video on Incarnation Care Center and the experiments done to foster/orphan children.

These experimental drug and vaccine trials on foster and orphaned children were sponsored by the NIH and various drug companies. These trials provided many research papers which are often used as references in the NIH Recommendations for drugs prescribed for hiv positive infants and children.In an article written in 2005 by the Alliance for Human Research and Protection regarding the situation at Incarnation Children's Center, they state,

"The nature and level of risk involved in these Phase I and II
experimental trials dictated that the agencies responsible for
the care of these foster children – such as the New York City
Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) – were required to
provide the mandated federal protection of an independent
advocate for each child. After a year of denial by ACS, an
investigation by the Associated Press uncovered evidence revealing that
465 NYC foster children were subjects in these trials and less
than one third (142) of those children were provided with an
advocate. ACS failed to provide the minimum protections afforded
by law." http://ahrp.org/new-evidence-uncovered-about-aids-drugvaccine-experiments-on-foster-care-infants-children/No advocates for these foster children for two-thirds of the foster children in these experimental drug and vaccine trials. Ethical? And again the history of hiv/aids research and recommendations seems to stand on the shifting sands of scientific behavior. Misconduct, lies, cheating to hold patents and make money. Foster children used as guinea pigs (many adults used as guinea pigs as well) and we are suppose to believe that what these researchers proclaim as truth is truth? Is it just an ethical problem? It appears to me to be one massive ethical problem with many people turning a blind eye to the obvious inconsistencies of current hiv/aids science. Strangely recent news on the discovery that a certain mosquito bite will cause microcephaly in the fetus of pregnant women reminds me of the similar crazy predictions made in the early 1980's regarding hiv/aids. The media writes its propaganda and people act as if media stories are truth. It seems that scientists are looking for a virus that causes microcephaly. Although science has shown that pesticides, herbicides-including glyphosate, radiation, lead, can cause microcephaly. So instead of looking at the obvious known reasons for microcephaly, we all must do the fear-laden dance of microbes out to get us humans. I found myself laughing when some newspaper stated that it is believed that this is sexually transmitted disease. Get bit by a mosquito, get the Zika virus and never have sex again. Kinda like hiv/aids. Get hiv and become a pariah in society. The only acceptable answer to hiv/aids is taking toxic drugs.

We will kill the Zika virus by spraying more toxic pesticides. Win-win for the pesticide/herbicide manufacturers, don't let anyone really look at what damage is done to our genes, our reproductive cells. While everyone is looking at mosquitoes as the cause, our toxic environment continues to destroy the health and well-being of life on earth. Immune deficiency has everything to do with our toxic environment, the ingestion of toxic drugs and food/infant formulas that destroy the gut. It is the gut with its beneficial microbes that maintains our immune system, our health. We seem hell-bent on destroying not only our internal environment, our immune system, but also our external environment. I feel like I am living a Greek tragedy in which I already know the ending.Copyright 2016 Valerie W. McClain

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"HUMAN MILK PATENT PENDING"

Human milk components and their gene constructs are being patented. Currently, there are some 2000 patents and applications in the US Patent & Trademark Office. Will the commercialization of human milk encourage, protect and promote breastfeeding? Or will patenting with its need for profits and monopoly result in less encouragement, protection and promotion of breastfeeding?

About Me

How does one describe oneself to those who landed on this page in this virtual library called the internet? I was born in Canada and moved to the USA when I was six years old. I graduated from the State University College of New York at Potsdam with a BA, majoring in political science. Got married, got divorced. Got married again, had children, got divorced. I birthed all my babies at home, breastfed them, and became a La Leche League leader for 10 years. I became an a IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) in 1991 and retired that credential in the fall of 2011. I was employed by the WIC Program for 4 years in Volusia County, Florida. In 1998 I began to question the reasoning behind denying hiv positive women the right to breastfeed. In my research for answers I stumbled upon a human milk component patent to be used to treat hiv/aids patients. Thus began my quest to understand why so much of the real knowledge of human milk is buried.